In a shocking turn of events, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed Thursday that the Biden administration is actively working with Mark Zuckerberg to regulate Facebook posts deemed as disinformation. They are especially targeting those surrounding the controversial COVID-19 vaccine efforts touted by Biden.
Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy chimed in on the matter, stating that “Big Tech and Big Government want the same thing — to control you,” he said in a tweet last Thursday.
“As a reminder, America is a land of FREEDOM,” McCarthy added.
In response to Psaki’s controversial statements during Friday’s press briefing, Fox News Reporter Peter Doocy engaged in a heated exchange with the press secretary as he characterized the Biden administration’s open admittance to working with Facebook on “flagging” what they say is COVID-19 “misinformation,” as “spying.”
Additionally, Doocy asked whether the 12 individuals listed as sharing the most inaccurate information on social media were made aware that their profiles were being tracked by the Surgeon General’s office, to which Psaki responded she would be “happy to get the citation of where that comes from,” adding that it is not “secret information.” Psaki immediately shifted the conversation back towards the administration’s belief that there is a “number of people who are dying around the country” due to misinformation spread on Facebook leading them to “not take a vaccine.”
When asked about the administration’s relationship with Big Tech, and how they were coordinating with social media giants to monitor and police misinformation, Psaki’s response was, “Given as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue of misinformation specifically on the pandemic.”
“In terms of actions that we have taken or we’re working to take, I should say, from the federal government, we’ve increased disinformation research and tracking,” she continued. “Within the Surgeon General’s Office, we’re flagging posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”
Identifying four “key steps” the Biden administration believes would help target misinformation the most, Psaki emphasized the need to measure the “impact” of misinformation on social media, specifically “COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.” The Biden administration plans to combat this by developing an “enforcement strategy” that would create stricter engagement rules on Facebook, and take “faster” action against posts that are allegedly harmful and inaccurate.